Opel Plans Ampera Successor, New EV May Offer 200-Mile Range

General Motors Company’s [NYSE:GM] European division Opel has confirmed it will drop the Ampera extended-range electric car when the car's global twin, the Chevrolet Volt, is replaced next year by all-new model. That doesn’t mean Opel is giving up on electric cars, as the automaker’s CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann has confirmed via a Tweet that a new Opel electric will be launched in the near future.

“After the eventual run out of the current-generation Ampera, we'll introduce a successor product in the electric vehicle segment,” Neumann’s Tweet read. “Our next electric vehicle will be part of our massive product offensive—with 27 new vehicles in the 2014-2018 timeframe.”

Neumann also Tweeted that Opel remains fully committed to vehicle electrification and that it will continue to drive down the costs of the cars in order to increase their popularity.

The Opel boss didn’t reveal any details on its Ampera successor, but the car is likely to be based on a new electric car GM is working on that former CEO Dan Akerson said will offer a 200-mile all-electric range. In the past week, South Korean firm LG Chem, a key battery supplier for GM, announced that it has developed a “second-gen” battery that offers an all-electric range of more than 200 miles. LG Chem plans to start supplying the batteries to automakers in 2016.